What's the deal with 1stdibs?  

I used to work for a 1st Dibs dealer and did the online postings for his store. Here is what I can tell you .
1. 1stdibs dealers set their own prices and own all the inventory. There is no 1st Dibs warehouse. Some dealers prices are outrageous and some are in the expected market range. Dealers with highly coveted pieces that are priced well tend to sell out quickly, so often when you look up items on 1stdibs, the dealers with available inventory tend to be at the higher end of the pricing range for the item/niche you are researching.
2. Based on the high end pricing I've seen from dealers, I believe many 1stdibs dealers price their pieces at double or more than what their bottom line price is. Rarely do dealers get full asking price. Unfortunately, many customers who want dealers to buy their pieces take the 1st dibs pricing at face value. We regularly received offers for 1stdibs pieces at 30-50% of asking price.
3. The overwhelming majority of 1st dibs buyers (through year end 2015) were design professionals who expect, and get, trade or net pricing when buying from dealers for their clients. That discount is typically at least 20-30% off the published prices. Dealers know this and price accordingly.
4. 1st dibs makes their money in a number of different ways. There are what is called 1st Dibs Direct purchases, essentially a Buy IT Now kind of feature, where 1st Dibs takes a 10% commission AND arranges the shipping on which they have negotiated a hefty discount AND help themselves to a nice override on that shipping charge as well. These commissions are IN ADDITION to the $550 monthly base fee + $15 per item initial list fee + $2 per month per item maintenance fee. So if your 1st Dibs store has an inventory of 500 pieces and you list 20 new pieces this month, your base fees for that month, not including any commission from Direct Orders, are $550 subscription fee, $1000 inventory maintenance fees, $300 new listings fees. There are a myriad of other extra fees as well, late fees if your listings aren't uploaded in time, $25 per item to be included in the new item postings, etc etc. plus there is very expensive advertising. So, with no set up fees or commissions, your 500 item inventory + 20 new listings costs $1850 per month on 1stdibs.
5. My dealer friend also tells me that the latest 1stdibs updates have infuriated many dealers. Like eBay, 1stdibs has now inserted themselves between the dealer and customer in all forms of communication. The online contact / email is blind to both sides. Dealers and customers are not permitted to provide their direct email, phone, or web contact info and if they do type it in, it is redacted just like an FBI file. The only phone numbers provided for customers to reach dealers are 1st Dibs relay lines and THEY ARE RECORDED and MONITORED by 1stdibs. Very creepy Big Brother stuff going on and they seem to have forgotten that they have NO ANTIQUE INVENTORY. If a customer is savvy enough to find a dealer's contact info independent of 1stdibs and ends up making a purchase, 1stdibs expects their commission too. Dealers hate the new set up and everyone is hoping that one or more of the 1st dibs competitors gets some serious traction so they can abandon the creepy Big Brother restrictions at 1stdibs.
6. 1st dibs also puts a tremendous amount of pressure on its dealers to accept returns and refunds for ridiculous, scammy transactions. We were strong armed into accepting a very pricey return 7 months after the purchase because the customer decided she didn't like how the 300 year old hand carved features weren't perfectly symmetrical.
So, yes 1stdibs is a valuable marketing channel but it is by far the most expensive and it is the individual dealers who come up with outrageous pricing and misappropriated attributions.
Hopefully, some of the 1stdibs competitors will grow big enough to offer customers and dealers more choices, but for now, they have the market share and are seriously exploiting that advantage.

I've done work for a high end antique shop in the US.
1stdibs is quite expensive for most dealers.
• $750 - $1,000 per month subscription.
• 10% commission on all sales.
• $2 - $20 per listing.
It's a necessary marketing expense as high end dealers have very low visibility outside of local markets.
1stDibs spends more than any competitor on advertising (fashion dealers benefit the most however). They also spend an incredible amount subsidizing shipping cost for customers. LA-NYC white glove delivery of a fragile credenza will likely cost about +$1,500 - 1stdibs offers a flat rate of $350.
Pricing is set by antique dealers & designed by the trade.
In a sense, designers & firms can be described as a dealer's sales force. Their 'commission' is the difference between the dealers trade & list price. It averages about 20% but varies. I'd definitely consider trade pricing fair from most antique dealers.
However, cash flow is king. Most small dealers will give trade if you ask them directly.

I didn't see it mentioned earlier in this thread, so I figured I'd drop this link here:
http://fortune.com/2015/09/09/1stdibs-funding/
Right about the time this thread was originally active, 1stdibs raised another round of equity, which effectively bought out the founder. There were already some a-list VC firms invested, along with Alibaba, but now the VCs and their CEO are running the show completely.
Their CEO, by the way, is David Rosenblatt, whose background is online advertising. He ran DoubleClick and sold it to Google. He was brought in Benchmark, one of the early VC investors, in 2011.

The original incarnation of 1stdibs created by Michael Bruno was to connect the world's finest antique dealers with designers and collectors. He succeeded! He was very selective about the dealers who were invited to participate, their years in business, reputation in the industry and there was a "cap" on dealers let in by region. Items were presented in their best possible incarnation - most mid century pieces either in mint condition or refurbished to be high end client ready and of course, priced accordingly. Looking at the new items offered was an absolute treat! I literally have a binder of items that I would print out not only for attribution purchases, but to keep track of the items being sold and at what price (though you never really know what the end price was for sure).
Once the investment company and new CEO came into the picture, the direction moved from being a site dedicated to being a shopping resource to connect dealers with clients to being a sales driven platform focused on capturing every possible sale. On one hand, the infusion of money allowed the site to penetrate the online marketplace at a much higher level and increase the overall presence of the site, brand recognition and increased sales for the dealers and the site. The flip side of that is that the cost of being a 1stdibs dealer dramatically increase as many fees doubled and the peer to peer connection or dealers to end clients has been removed as well as any chance of salesmanship skills of those dealers.
As more and more dealers across the world, both high and low end have been brought in, you can definitely see that the same high standards for dealers and pieces has not been maintained. Less and less items are being offered in "client ready"condition. For some, that may be good as they may want to have purchases refurbished to their own specifications by their own restoration specialists - certainly a beautiful lacquered finish can be damaged in transit, but for others, to buy pieces in original condition is a deterrent as buying a project for a designer can certainly cost a designer more money and certainly time than originally anticipated.
Many of the new dealers are vendors who have been selling on Ebay (you can even find the same items with the same pictures on both sites) or the "pickers" for some of the original higher end 1stdibs dealers with storefronts. Once the pickers are pulled out of the food chain, it makes it harder & more expensive for the high end dealers to purchase quality merchandise. Think of the cost for a Manhattan antique dealer to buy a piece from a picker in Colorado, ship it to NY to their refinisher and/ or reupholster then have it brought into their showroom to offer for sale at their showroom or on 1stdibs (not to mention the high cost of rent in the city) all in the hopes that a designer will come in and select it for a client. Compare that to going online and finding the same or similar piece on 1stdibs in original condition and buying it from a picker with subsidized shipping from the site - in a lot of ways 1stdibs is competing with the dealers on whom the business was originally built.
As 1stdibs attempts to capture every sale possible, they are inadvertently lowered the overall quality and rarity of the products on which the site's reputation was originally established. The increase in competition will most likely force a period of low sales for high end dealers that will force them to lower their prices while their overhead continues going up - that's the simple economics of supply and demand. Antiques and vintage pieces are finite quantity and the competition to get those pieces will continue to increase.
The 1stdibs commission structure on sales isn't capped at 10% - remember that the investment company has spent millions to create a sales driven platform and hired a CEO with an amazing resume who could have gone to work pretty much anywhere - again, not for the love of antiques, but to make money. The most logical goal for the investors and CEO is to build the organization to go public for a big payout. The biggest question remains to be seen - how much will 1stdibs increase fees and commissions for dealers until they decide to migrate to another site or just give up all together. Taking the monthly 1stdibs site costs mentioned in another post at $1,800 a month, dealers have $21,600 in site fees before any other overhead. If the yearly sales of an antiques dealer are $500,000, at a 10% commission and 3% credit card processing fee, that's an additional $51,500, so $73,100 a year, 15% of gross revenue - which puts a big dent in a dealer's ability to not only pay for overhead, but to acquire new and ever increasing in cost inventory. The rest remains to be seen...

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